Tag: budget cuts

As I celebrated Thanksgiving with my extended family this weekend, eating from a huge spread, sharing updates and stories and generally catching up at a big family gathering, I also thought about the many kids and families Save the Children works with all around the world and right here in the United States. I knew their lives were totally different from my own three kids’ and those of my many nieces and nephews. My sons and

The AIDS epidemic reached 30 this year and though there has been a huge amount of progress here in the U.S., the story in Africa is a vastly different one. On the continent, women and children are the main victims of the disease with the fastest growth of infection rate now among women and youth. Over 22 million are affected across Africa.

When you see the face of HIV/AIDs in countries like Ethiopia, it is often through the eyes of a child, like the kids I met on a trip to the “transportation corridor” between Addis Ababa, the capital, and the trade hub of Awassa.

I’m going with D. Like so many of us, I’m working hard this week, and I’m looking forward to a nice Sunday brunch with friends. But, October 16 is also World Food Day, a time to reflect on food and hunger issues around the world.

It’s very cool that this year, Sunday is also Blog Action Day – a chance for thousands of bloggers to rally around an important cause. Special thanks to our friends at Oxfam for organizing this year’s Blog Action Day around an issue affecting hundreds of millions of children around the world – hunger.

Save the Children has produced an embeddable World Food Day Quiz for the occasion. It’s an interactive way to share some surprising information about hunger. By posting it, bloggers can do more than spread critical awareness, they can offer readers a easy way to make a real difference. The quiz ends with the option to send an urgent message to Congress: Don’t slash foreign aid! It’s no time to abandon efforts to fight hunger.

Here’s the quiz and below some context around why its ultimate message is so critical right now:

The good news is that the world has made great progress on reducing child hunger. The United Nations reports that child malnutrition rates in the developing world have dropped from 30 percent to 23 percent between 1990 and 2009. That means millions of children have escaped the permanent physical and intellectual stunting that malnutrition causes, and the deadly disease that can often follow.

But there’s also some really bad news. Just at a time when economic crisis, food price volatility and more severe weather are threatening to reverse gains in fighting global hunger, the U.S. Congress is considering massive cuts to foreign assistance programs that help hungry children around the world.

Although surveys have shown many Americans think as much as 25% of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid, the truth is only about 1% does. And only half of that goes to humanitarian and development programs that fight hunger and disease and offer impoverished children a chance for a better future. Let’s not cut the very programs that offer the best chances for building a healthier and more prosperous world!

Whether or not we have the option for a nice Sunday brunch this week, that kind of progress benefits us all.